On: Afternoon gigs, career changes, and hope.

I keep doing things I have been meaning to do for ages. Is it a bucket list or am I finally becoming a Good Person? (Doubtful)

This week I gave blood for the first time ever (am I sure? Yes I am A positive) 

According to the nurse I have “a really good vein” 

Arm of a really good person with a good vein.

I replied “yeah I would make a great junkie wouldn’t I?” 

“Errrr” 

Whilst there I bumped into a guy who used to do standup but stopped and started a different business. I find career changes fascinating. At my Blackpool gig I heard about a brilliant Russian juggler who had become an I.T wizard and moved ‘upstairs’ into the office. 

A career change I think about often is Dick Francis, who went from being an incredibly successful jump jockey to writing worldwide bestselling thriller novels (enjoyed by me and my Granny). I love the idea of him sitting with his other jockey pals and them all discussing what they would do next. 

“I already have a job in a stable”

“I might be a jockey’s agent”

“I am going to work for a saddle manufacturer”

“I am going to be a world famous writer penning over 50 thrillers, all written in the first person and all tangentially referencing horse racing”

“Ok Dick”

Another dramatic career change I ponder is that of David Icke. Household name TV sports presenter, and then massive fame as a turquoise wearing conspiracy theorist, initially claiming to be the son of God (he may have rowed back on some of that stuff, I haven’t paid it any heed, whereas I have read loads of Dick Francis novels)

Photo by Andrew Hall on Unsplash

At a Blackpool daytime gig I was offered a dessert after the show, but too late, they’d all gone out. In comedy it is often the hope that kills you. The hope new jokes will work, the hope dinner will arrive, the hope that parking will be easy, the hope the hope the hope. It kills.

Wrapping up my set in Blackpool I realised that I was building up a bit that would take too long to do all of, and the longish set-up to the funny bit may be overly stretching their focus, I didn’t want to lose them at the end of an otherwise good gig and go off on something flopping. I hurriedly bailed.

“Actually I haven’t got time to tell you that, I don’t want to overrun and affect the food timings. Thanks very much, Bye!” 

Although this makes me cringe, I suspect the reality of doing my Winston Churchill jokes at double speed whilst 200 desserts were waiting to go out may have been worse. 

Last week included another matinee show- and a predictable mistake. In Skegness at 1.40pm I blurted out “Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen” and then self corrected “whoops, obviously, I mean Good Afternoon”

As though the 400 plus people at Butlins’ Skegness gave a remote shit about my slight lapse. Fun gig though, if somewhat rowdy and unfocussed. I closed on rude jokes rather than the stuff about historical revisionism. Make of that what you will.

As I neared Skegness I stopped at a restaurant for a toilet break and ordered myself a roast dinner. 

In some haste I popped a mouthful of beef, gravy, a bit of Yorkshire pudding and a sizeable chunk of roast potato into my gob. Once in there I realised one of the foodstuffs was incredibly hot. I try to resist using cliche, but someone else would be saying “a roast potato slightly hotter than the surface of the sun was now trapped in my mouth”

Had I swallowed it immediately it would have fizzed straight through my throat and dropped on the floor behind my chair. Singeing carpet no doubt.

I had to juggle the hot potato (an actual hot potato, not a conversational one, such as asking at a dinner party if people think a man can really become a woman) so I played a tongue and roast potato game of keepy-uppy until I could grab my glass of tap water and slurp it in. I find it gross when people drink into a mouth already containing food, but I was trying to avert a medical emergency. Eventually I had a ‘Sunday dinner and tap water’ paste inside my mouth and could safely swallow it down. A terrifying moment. 

Last night I performed at a corporate event. Sometimes they promise a meal but it doesn’t arrive, or arrives just before I am due onstage. Rather than hope for an early meal (it is the hope that kills you) I now tend not to eat, or if something does show up I eat it afterwards. (I have been known to arrive at a posh do with a secret sandwich meal deal in my bag to snaffle pre-show and I eat any provided meal after)

When my gig was done the woman from the venue said “I have just sent up your dinner but I think one may have gone up there before the show as well, so there might be two.”

“I will eat both” 

I am by no means an eco warrior nor even a Good Person (although I do give blood now, and we did take in a Ukrainian) but food waste makes me sad, particularly when it is meat.

At 22.40 last night I ate two beef dinners, one warm and one freezing cold. I didn’t go one first then the other, I alternated, a fork of warm food and then of cold. Weird. After the hot potato incident I rather relished the lack of mouth burning jeopardy.

PS- Next week I hope to have an announcement to put on here. But, it is the hope that kills you.